Indian IT Outsourcing Company- Provides Innovative and Cost-Effective E-commerce Solutions
The modern business world is internet-driven and hence organizations, big or small now pay more attention on their websites. Since Internet reaches every nook and corner of the world, it offers vast customer base. To tap this vast opportunity, the business organization needs a robust and secure e-commerce website. A professional Indian IT outsourcing company provides cost-effective and innovative e-commerce solutions.
India has rich pool of highly skilled web developers and programmers, who drive IT outsourcing industry in India to deliver world class IT solutions to its clients spread across the globe. There are highly talented PHP developers in India and because PHP is widely used in e-commerce development, an Indian IT outsourcing company is highly proficient in development of online shopping carts.
The salary of the PHP developer in India is quite less compared to his or her Western counterpart for same level of work skills. This benefits Indian IT outsourcing company by reducing the development costs. Besides this, Indian developers are second to none, when it comes to developing innovative web applications, especially for e-commerce.
The web developers in Indian IT outsourcing company use the latest e-commerce development tools like Magento, Prestashop, VirtueMart, Interspire, X-Cart, Zen-Cart and osCommerce to create stunning online shopping carts loaded with e-commerce features , which facilitate smooth and secure online shopping. The shopping carts are customized according the business needs of the clients and offer robust, secure and highly scalable online business solutions that can easily accommodate any changes in the future due to changing business scenario. The developers integrate secured payment and shipping gateways, multiple language and currencies features and host of other e-commerce features that ensure smooth online transaction.
The web developers in the IT outsourcing company use latest Flex versions to integrate rich graphics, video and audio clips, 2D/3D animations and playback multimedia in the e-commerce site. These features increase the interaction between website site and end users. The business managers can easily demonstrate their hosted products or services to worldwide audience and this is a very cheap way to advertise the product/services on such a huge scale. Furthermore e-commerce site is not restricted by barrier of time and distance and it easily reaches out to people spread across the globe. They can easily buy the hosted product or service, at click of button thanks to the array of e-commerce features embed in it. The IT outsourcing company takes care of the security of the online shopping cart and incorporates the SSL technology during the development process. As result the e-commerce site is highly secure and online buyers can easily transact, without any security concerns.
IT outsourcing company also understands the importance of content in the e-commerce site. Hence it customizes Content Management System like Jhoomla and Drupal to empower the website owner to update the content of their e-commerce site periodically. They can easily update, edit, delete and add new content to their product catalogues. This helps them to stay abreast in the competition by delivering latest offerings to their clients at a competitive pricing. Thus and Indian IT outsourcing company provides inventive e-commerce solutions at very competitive pricing so that clients can raise their productivity.
About the Author
Tatvasoft is a leading IT outsourcing company that provides tailor made IT solutions for complex business problems so that clients thrive even in stiff competitive atmosphere.
E-Commerce Security
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E-commerce – Getting the Best Advice on Internet Security for Your Business
Good business internet security must be tailored to suit individual business needs, providing strong controls throughout the IT systems within the business. Itemised below are some of the key components for consideration to help in the protection of an e-commerce business from internet threats.
Defining your Security Requirements
An e-commerce business generally requires a range of security measures. Some of these are purely practical, but there are also obligations to meet including:
Industry regulations (PCI-DSS Payment Card Industry)
Laws - Trade Practices Act
ASX (and other exchanges) Listing principles
National Privacy Principles
The essential requirement is therefore that internet security must cover all aspects of business and therefore all IT systems in the environment.
An example highlighting the need for tailored services is a typical online business with many service providers involved in providing the solution. This could include marketing agencies, Payment Gateway providers, Service Providers, Hosting Provider, Application developers, Database Administrators and System Administrators.
Some of these providers may have direct connections to the environment. This connection may expose the business to more attacks directed against these other providers. Therefore possible vulnerabilities must be thoroughly and individually assessed from multiple angles to understand the risks the environment faces.
Meeting Security Requirements
The basic security requirements for doing business online are relatively straightforward. All business systems mustcomply with any security-related requirements imposed by interested parties such as Merchant service providers.
Web hosting services may have their own requirements however many limit there involvement to maintaining application patches of the operating system and installed applications.
A security consultant can assist by designing and configuring systems to ensure compliance with industry best practices. The design and management of all of these components are to help safeguard the business from attack as well as provide business partners and interested parties a demonstration of the commitment to ensuring system security.
Success criteria for e-commerce security
Online security is a multi-layered and an involved process, but the criteria for success are indicative of the key needs in this area:
Business internet security is designed to minimise vulnerabilities. So Ensure coverage across the many areas involved in producing the online service.
Client security and privacy are also the business' responsibility and care should be taken to ensure you don't contribute to the poor client security woes. Through poor security practices.
Security is a process and should be a constantly monitored and measured on an ongoing basis.
About the Author
HackLabs is a Security Consulting Company specialising in Penetration Testing. We perform testing for our clients whom from all around the world. For more information, visit Penetration Testing
Development through foreign investment and export. According to the trend of globalization this is precisely the government-approved paradigm of development, the real aim of which is plunder. Free-of-cost supply of water and infrastructure, land and labour at cheap price—these are the preconditions of such investments. The investors will bring over their own capital, own technology, even their own raw material if required; and then they will carry on indiscriminate plunder, shatter nature, environment, destroy water, air, soil, and all resources for production. Ultimately they will leave without the least qualm after they have pushed the total economy of the country into the jaws of imminent disaster. This has been proved by history; Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and other places bear witness to this process. When the investors arrive they force a huge number of people to death by dispossessing them of their means of livelihood, displacing them from habitation, and pauperizing to destitution; and when they finally leave they have already shattered the backbone of the country’s total economic development which affects not only the uprooted, penniless, homeless millions, but also people belonging to all rungs of the society. Considered in this perspective the plan of installing ‘chemical hub’ in West Bengal acquires enormous significance. It becomes clear here how international trade and commerce , in their own interest, offers some such projects to the third world countries, where the dazzle of advertisements and fanfare of government propaganda keep hidden the ugly face of the marauders, the real conspiracy of the plunderers.
But what is actually meant by this so-called controversial ‘chemical hub’? It is not known if there is any formal definition of this phenomenon. Anyway, as a practical definition it can be said that ‘chemical hub’ is an industrial zone which contains a series of chemical factories that are connected to each other in an interdependent chain. However, the real issue is not the definition, but the threat of pollution, ecological imbalance, threat to public health, security, etc. And certainly of course some more questions are related to this. For instance, exactly what chemical items are going to be produced there, and for whom; what is their requirement, who are going to be the main consumer of the produced goods—are they Indians or foreigners, etc., etc.? Furthermore, if it is meant for indigenous consumption, then what will be our policy regarding chemical production? In fact, chemical industry is not just another industry. Its area is far more extended, and its impact too is far-reaching. In addition to this, chemical industry is directly connected with agricultural policy, and various other questions related to environment and habitation are also involved in this context.
Today’s chemical industry is not what it was a hundred years ago. Today it has sent tentacles into food processing, agricultural trade, manufacturing from seeds to cosmetics, soft drinks and many different items. Besides installation of such a chemical zone involves great hazards at every step. The place where huge quantities of such a dangerous range of chemicals will be produced, will necessarily emit or spit up countless elements which are bound to be hazardous for the environment, for the health and security of the labourers, as also for vast numbers living in the adjacent areas. Even apart from this, there always remains the possibility of some massive accident, the kind of which had been witnessed in Bhopal. In this situation, if the produced goods are again shipped off abroad, why should we at all take this additional risk of danger? We must give serious thought to the matter.
According to the note issued by the State Government here the hub will be engaged in making petrochemical products. The main problem of such chemicals producing zone is the poisonous waste which is not less hazardous than radioactive nuclear waste by any account. Any chemical reaction lead to the production of certain unwanted items which come to no use any more. For instance , the lethally poisonous Dioxin, or Furan, can be mentioned. Besides there are the varied polluting emissions which roll into the air. Among the waste there are the heavy metal including mercury, arsenic, etc. Where will these go? It is quite expensive to reduce or control the amount of poisonous waste. Who will shoulder this extra expense? All the industries indiscriminately dump this waste into adjacent rivers, canals or the sea. A sizeable portion also enters the air as black smoke. This creates a heavy layer in the air, and innumerable minutest of the minute particles gather in the air which lead to perforation in human lungs. The heavy elements spread over the soil, seep into the lower layers underneath, roll into the water tanks of the locality. Gradually, the rivers, sea, canals, tanks, forests, plantations, everything get contaminated by the poison. The strong poison seeps from the surface through the soil into the underground; drinking water gets poisoned, which again in its turn attacks the agricultural field. From there through crops and corns the poison creeps into the bodies of humans and cattle, poultry and fish leading to various severe incurable diseases. That is the grim inevitability. Ultimately the whole zone ceases to be habitable any more. Then the big companies too wind up their industry and sneak off elsewhere.
‘Chemical Hub’! However fine the name may sound, this is but that old wine in new bottle. In many places of the world industrial zones of this type have come up. And the experience of those chemicals producing industry zones is not of prosperity, but rather its opposite. A glaring example of the kind of horrible disaster that can fall upon a whole area in the wake of emissions from the long chain of factories is Kubatao, the chemical industry city or ‘hub’ of Brazil. During the decade of the seventies, in the name of quick and largescale development and prosperity, it had indiscriminately invited a host of investors. On the crest of a tidal wave of foreign investment, this industry city came up there—crowned as ‘the Chemical Capital of Brazil’; flanked by the flowing river, while Port Santos, the largest Latin American sea port stood close by, -- a flawless communication-transport system both by land and water routes. To this was added trade-friendly liberal industrial policy, cheap labour, unlimited tax concession, land at nominal price, -- a free field for plundering. At that time no other country in the world was agreeable to such an extent of concessions. Therefore, by getting the guarantee of biggest profit the investors had rushed for Brazil which provided for them the ideal arena for unrestrained plunder. It seems much like the scene of today’s West Bengal or India.
Kubatao is the grim example of the horrible consequences of unplanned haphazard investment, unrestrained trade, and the limitless concession to export-oriented economy. Within just a single decade that city turned into the valley of death. It is for this reason that Kubatao is called ‘the valley of death.’ The dense Atlantic forest that once covered the mountain ranges there was completely destroyed. The river that once quietly brimmed with life turned into a dead water reservoir. There was no living creature inside the river any more; it was now carrying only poisonous water and some water plants. The city slithered with poison all over its body. The air above is poisoned; so is the soil below, the land, the forests. Kubatao began to have infants born without the brains, infants who rarely survived and were born deformed. It was difficult to draw one’s breath in the heavy air, which severely lacked oxygen. The sky was dark even during day time. And sickness everywhere! Most of the residents of the area had been suffering from tuberculosis, or cancer, asthma or lungs-related various diseases. The once dense forests upon the hills had disappeared; in its place appeared some stray dwarfish sickly trees and plants , with leaves shaken off by the pungent smoke of chemicals. Every now and then landslides occurred, killing many. This was compounded by frequent acid rains. In all a total disaster it was.
By 1985 the situation of Kubatao went completely out of control. In January that year a continuous rain of two days and 15 inches was followed by a strange landslide. Hundreds and hundreds of displaced boulders came down crashing on the valley of Kubatao. The gigantic ammonia pipeline in Villa Parisi burst and within an instant thick pungent smoke, dense like cloud, shot up. Many were injured in this accident, many fell sick. Although initially the government refused to admit, ultimately the administration was forced to make an emergency evacuation of the entire region on war-footing. The governor of Sao Paolo officially declared emergency, and ordered the pollution control board of the state to enforce an immediate curb on pollution, a thing which was impossible at this stage. During the span of more than twenty years that followed since, and in spite of the concerted effort of many organizations, the pollution level of Kubatao could not be lowered to the below-danger level.
Brazil is not alone. Similar histories lie scattered over the world. Even within the territories of the USA itself it has been noticed how the adjacent areas to chemical factories become infested with poison. Let us cast a glance at Midland of the state of Michigan. Dow Chemical, one of the world’s biggest producers of chemical goods, has poisoned not only the water of the Tittabaowasi river, but also the underground layers beneath its basin. The local residents have launched movement against this. Residents of the area have filed suit against the Dowe Chemicals alleging its responsibility behind their many ailments including cancer. The level of poisonous Dioxin is extraordinarily high there, which can lead not only to cancer, but also to serious complicated ailments including heart-disease, diabetes, skin-disease, deformity at birth, etc. The data figures in the bulletin of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. In Washington various allegations have come up against Du Pont, the largest chemical corporate of the world. For instance, in the adjacent areas to Du Pont’s factory in Virginia, the tap water shows the presence of the poisonous C8 which is used in Teflon. When blood test of the local residents also exposed the presence of the same poisonous element, cases had been lodged against the company. It was alleged that the company had deliberately suppressed facts. In the Teflon case Du Pont had to pay more than ten million US dollars towards compensation. It needs no mention that even after Teflon had been banned in the USA it continued to be exported long afterwards. It should be mentioned in this connection that there are many chemicals which have been banned in the developed countries, but are still being produced and used in the underdeveloped countries of the world.
[Author: Abhi Datta Majumdar; Professor, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata. Translation by Rama Kundu from the Dainik Statesman, 29 & 30 June 2007]
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[Author: Abhi Datta Majumdar; Professor, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata. Translation by Rama Kundu from the Dainik Statesman, 29 & 30 June 2007]
Let us now look back from North America to Asia. In Japan, towards the West of Kauusu there is a small coastal village, called Minamata. During the early years of the last century there came up the carbide factory of the Nippon Kesso Company in Minamata. As they could not garner enough profit by producing carbide only, they gradually started manufacturing from carbide calcium sulphide and later on chemical fertilizer containing ammonium sulphate. In the meantime Mitsubishi also joined them on partnership basis. By 1930 they had accessed the technology of manufacturing acetylene by using mercury compound. They started producing various organic items like acetic acid, acetone, butanol, etc. In course of this process they also established their monopoly in acetylene chemistry. Not only in their own country, but also in many countries abroad, including Korea, ther Nippon Kesso spread its empire. In the meantime the topography of Minamata too has changed along this course of the progress of the Nippo Kesso Company. Initially from village to town, Minamata had eventually emerged as a full-fledged city, with abundant roads, communication and transport facility.
But under this façade of prosperity there lies hidden many an untold story of lost lives, shattered families, ruined means of livelihood, smashed ways of life. The local fishermen, farmers, farm lands have been ruined bit by bit silently imperceptibly. The horrible claws of chemical industry have grabbed and mangled all the resources of man’s livelihood. The uncontrolled dumping of factory waste has poisoned the sea water, which has in its turn infected sea weeds, fish and other creatures of the sea. Poisonous chemical elements have entered the food chain, which through the circuit of other creatures ultimately enters the human body. The soil, air, water, forests have been infected in the same way. In all it headed for such a grim situation about which nobody had spared a forethought – neither the company nor the government had been bothered by it in the least. Consequently the pollution went on unabated, and the count of the infected started to show a steep hike.
The horror of the situation came to the fore around 1956. One day four patients, complaining of a strange symptom, were admitted to Minamata hospital. The number continued to swell with time. The symptoms included signs of mental abnormality, rigour, fainting, slipping into coma, and finally death. Before long this unknown ailment took the form of pestilence in the area. As the very ailment was of an unknown category, treatment too was not possible. Eventually it came to light that all of them used to catch fish in the far sea, and consume that fish on a regular basis. Harosuai, a physician at the local hospital, first turned attention towards the sea. After some time, the very same year a team of researchers from Kumamoto university discovered the presence of an extraordinary level of mercury in the waste rolling into the sea water, and they identified this as the cause of the lethal disease. The discovery led to a considerable stirring at the national level. But Kesso refused to admit the allegation and continued their production as before. Neither did they have any trouble amassing the governmental support on their side. Instead of disinfecting the environment the government only came down ruthlessly on the very report, which was stiffly opposed. The demonstration of local fishermen against Kesso was met with repression and torture on the part of the government. In the meanwhile hundreds of cats, turned mad, started to jump into the sea and thus commit suicide. Every now and then infected birds started dropping down from the sky and falling dead. Various ailments including physical deformities surfaced among the bulk of the human population of the area.
Then at last Nippon Kesso geared itself up to stop protest. They started thrusting cash into the palms of the infected. The government kept completely silent on the matter. Neither did they announce any kind of compensation. On the other hand more than forty thousand people had waited till 1993 in the hope of compensation. Neither was there any compensation, nor any pause in production, or any restrain in the violation of nature. No order/ordinance was clamped on Kesso towards restraining or controlling this violation; instead a ban was imposed upon the fishermen of the locality—that they could catch fish in the sea, but won’t be allowed to consume that fish or any other sea-creature. Furthermore, the news had already reached far and wide. As a result no customer was to be found for their fish. Consequently an enormous economic disaster confronted the fishermen of the entire area. In the meantime Kesso had started dumping its waste into the adjacent river called Minamata; carried along the flow of the river pollution now spread into other cities as well, and there too the diseases of Minamata began to spread. Countless people died. And as there was no cure for this ailment except pollution control, the consequence of the Minamata disease too was extremely terrifying. It is strange that Nippon Kesso had never admitted that the pollution caused by their waste was the precise cause of this pestilence. Consequently none of the affected has got any compensation till date.
Since this is the fallout of chemical industry zone [or ‘hub’] throughout the world, how far should it be wise or practicable to build this type of industry zone in a densely populated state like West Bengal, or a highly populated country like India? It is desirable not to undertake any project of such potentially hazardous industry in a place where there is no existing appropriate governmental infrastructure to ensure public safety-security, where there is practically no existing system to control pollution. It is also noticeable that the government here is seeking to install ‘chemical hub’ precisely in the Brazilian model. The raw material will come from abroad; they will use the water, land and cheap labour of our country. Then the produced goods will be shipped off to other countries, especially to those developed countries which are adequately conscious of their health requirements, sufficiently vocal about protecting their own environment.
In fact, it is under the pressure of environmental movements of the first world that the many big commercial houses are now in a rush for the third world shores in order to maintain their rate of profit. Today the new chemical industry control policy in Europe, called ‘RICH’, have been forcing the investors to look for new locations. ‘RICH’ is the abbreviated name of a policy called ‘Registration Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals’. Since the enforcement of this regulation it will not be possible for them to shoulder all the responsibility of protecting the environment and amassing the huge profit margin at the same time; it is precisely for this reason that they have now been on the lookout for new sites. The German company, BASF has already declared in so many words that this regulation is not realistic; because this will multiply the cost of building and running ‘chemical hubs’ to such a degree that customers will ultimately give up the consumption of chemicals. Yet Europe has not backed out from its earlier stance at all; not only that, but they are also actively engaged in strengthening their own chemical usage policy and imposing control over the use of many items.
Towards ensuring a pollution-free earth the Stockholm convention of 2001 had identified twelve specific chemicals as the ‘dirty dozen’. Recently many more items are being added up to these compounds. That list includes undesirable poisonous waste like Dioxin, furan as well as various chlorine-based insecticides including D.D.T., Eldrine , and poisonous by-products. These are called ‘Persistent organic pollutant’ or POP compound. This means that these are not only poisonous, these can continue unabated in the environment for a long time, and can even be bio-accumulative. This means they can enter the vegetation or animal body , through food chain and can infect the human body through these. Let us suppose this is sprinkled on the grass; from there it enters the body of bovines and other cattle, from there again in the milk; through the milk seeping into the human body, which can even percolate through the body of the succeeding generation. A big range of such poisonous chemicals are again broadly classified as PBT, or ‘Persistent Bio-accumulative Toxic Chemical’.
In addition to this there are several other compounds which are called carcinogenic, mutagenic, and toxic to reproduction, or CMR compounds. This refers to those chemical compounds which can lead to cancer, mutation (cell splitting), and adversely affect reproduction. Many elements of the petrochemical industry are characterized by both these properties. Therefore, Europe and America have imposed various restrictions in the areas of high volume production. It is not difficult to guess how far these restrictions are applicable in a country like India. Besides this there are also many hazards during application. The way dangerous chemicals are handled in this country with bare hands, and without taking any precaution, is enough to send cold shivers through the spine of any person with the minimum awareness. The question of additional measures for labour security is better left unmentioned.
In the developed countries it is not only that many chemicals are being banned, or restrictions are being imposed on the production of compounds classified as POP, CMR, PBT; the proportion of poisonous elements in industry waste is subject to strict surveillance. In all chemical industry faces a big challenge in Europe today. It may be mentioned that there are some chemicals whose synthesizing is restricted though not the use. The USA too has been imposing stricter state control over chemicals industry. The reason of all such restriction is precisely the possibility of hazards related to this industry. Not that it is impossible to produce by obeying all the restrictions; but that should be enormously expensive. That is why the multinational mega industrial companies have been seeking out the third world countries. It is common knowledge that in these third world countries there is practically no such thing as proper system towards pollution control; neither can the situation change overnight. Therefore, if the production is shifted to this location then the profit level can be maintained at ease. It is only too clear that if West Bengal is turned into such an industrial colony under the excuse of development, then ultimately it will be a repeat of Kuabato; such an anxiety can prove only too real.
The government-adopted paradigm of development, in accordance with the trend of globalization , and by means of investment and export, is actually a plan of plunder to serve the interests of multinational trade; and the effort to set up chemical hub in West Bengal is but a glaring example of that plan of plunder. And if it materializes , a total disaster will be inevitable in the coming days. In view of the standard and infrastructure of pollution control in our country, and moreover, in view of the past record of the big multinational trade and industry, it requires no great wisdom to foretell that wherever such an industry zone comes up, a vast area around it will be turned into a graveyard in near future. Agriculture, food, water, air, public health, everything will be under attack. The moment they find it uncongenial to their interest all the time-servers of today will wind up their trade and scurry away; but they will leave behind a poisonous killer field. Those who knowingly or unknowingly, acting at the behest of foreign multinational companies, are taking initiative to set up this chemical hub, are actually forcing the countrymen to a devastating, horrible, grim hell. In the name of industrialization they are actually going to stop all roads to development, and stop them permanently. Posterity will not forgive any of them for this crime.
[Author: Abhi Datta Majumdar; Professor, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata. Translation by Rama Kundu from the Dainik Statesman, 29 & 30 June 2007]
About the Author
Student Video - E-Commerce Security Threats
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[simpleaffiliate source="chitika" results="0"][/simpleaffiliate] Security Threats for the E-Commerce?
I was wondering about the different types of security threats around the internet, e.g. Virus' and fraud, and how you would stop them getting into your computer.
1.XSS and CSRF attacks to hijack login sessions or reveal data to another site.
2.Social Engineering through emails to get you to install malicious software or login to fake login pages for say a bank, online casino, or something else.
3.Software vulnerabilities that are remotely executable allow arbitrary code to be ran on your machine. Depending on the privileges of the vulnerable process this can have different impacts. Use Data Execution Prevention on all processes under windows to help prevent this.
4.Social Engineering in general
5.Using public data in password recovery questions on websites.
6.Poor AV when installing software. It needs to be able to detect packers and have decent heuristics. Avira, Kaspersky, and Dr.Web do it the best.
7.No rootkit protection. The ones that come with an AV are poor. GMER, IceSword, and RKU are the best.
8. Poor Database filtering. SQL is the most common database query language. Sql injection allows an attacker to retrive and inject data from/to the database of the website.
[simpleaffiliate source="chitika" results="0"][/simpleaffiliate] Should I change my web hosting server? For Zen Cart shopping cart? and what about for my business info site?
I have a Zen Cart e-commerce site but I want some more customization to the template (one issue) and I also wonder if a different hosting site would result in more traffic and more online orders (a second issue.)
Can the selection of the hosting site result in more traffic and more orders? I selected who I've got because at the time I thought the inter-linking with all the other community sites they serve would benefit me. (The info business site.)
The e-commerce site came second, but now is my primary concern. My service provider and hosting site brought me to Zen Cart and have me set up but only adequately. I'd like to customize the template more (I can lean on them to get that done if that's really the only shortcoming) - - but I also wonder if they just aren't an expert host for e-commerce and that if I went with someone from Zen Cart's recommended list (or another big national).... that I'd get more orders.
Are security badges important? I see a lot of sites without.
Hello, I host my ecommerce web site(Zen) with ZaxiHosting This is my plan which I used: http://www.zaxihosting.com/ecommerce-web-hosting.html (The 2nd) Ask them if they can help you. Regards
[simpleaffiliate source="chitika" results="0"][/simpleaffiliate] Security threats on an e-commerce site?
what are the main security threats that could pose a risk to the operation of an e-commerce website. pls can one explain the risks to these threats and what are specific countermeasures that could be put in place to protect against these threats
This must be your homework assignment? Suggest you visit the business websites of Thawte and Verisign for starters (links 1 and 2 below) then read link 3 for detailed analysis.
Cybercrime, hacking, phishing scams, spam and online fraud - security
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Data Center Vulnerabilities: Why are Modern Data Centers Failing?
The year 2008 began with a dire prediction from Subodh Bapat, a vice president in the eco-computing team at Sun Microsystems, when he declared, "You?ll see a massive failure in a year." He went on to say, "We are going to see a data center failure of that scale," referring to the worm that took down 5% of worldwide UNIX boxes in 1988.¹
This time he isn't citing security lapses as the root cause but rather failure caused by the massive computing power required to run today's applications.
Though certainly an extreme position, the past year has seen a rash of data center failures that brings into question how reliable single data centers are for the delivery of mission-critical applications.
Vulnerabilities ranging from the most common, like natural disasters and infrastructure failure (data center power outage, burst pipes, construction work damaging fibre lines, ) to hardware failure, storage or database failure and common software problems, have been causing regular disruptions to businesses and come with a high price tag.
Recent events in the news support the fact that even with good planning, resourcing and design, some of the most sophisticated facilities can still experience catastrophic failure.
Last summer, the state-of-the-art 365 Data Center, in San Francisco – built with more than $125 million - was offline for hours due to a power grid outage by Pacific Gas & Electric that put a significant portion of San Francisco in the dark. Subsequently, the backup generators at the facility also experienced failure and had to be manually started.²
"When researching data centers, new facilities often boast N+2 levels of redundancy," says Roger Smith, V.P. of Operations at Ceryx Inc. "However, as these same facilities fill up and age, that often becomes N+1, or in some areas no redundancy at all."
According to Sun Microsystems Executives, the typical life span of a data center is only about 10 to 12 years and many data centers - built at the beginning of the dot-com era – now need to be rebuilt.
"As the person who is accountable for uptime I have to balance which applications are considered critical by upper-management and clearly communicate the cost and investment required to provide high-availability," says Roger Smith. "When you present the facts, it becomes clear to everyone that an in-house data center couldn't possibly provide the levels of redundancy required and even on a co-location level we would need redundancy."
In many cases, no contingency plan could avoid the issues that plague individual data centers. On July 14th of this year, the Peer 1 data center in downtown Vancouver – one of the largest facilities in Canada – was offline for almost an entire day. An underground fire caused massive power outages throughout downtown Vancouver. While backup generators at Peer 1 started without issue, the water-based cooling system failed as firefighters – in their attempt to douse the fire - depleted the water pressure required to keep the cooling systems operational. This caused the backup generators to overheat and any failover to UPS was limited to a short battery life.³
In a similar event this summer, The Planet, a prominent hosting provider in Houston, experienced a major explosion in their data center, taking more than 9000 customer servers offline for several days. Backup generators worked perfectly, but again the fire department would not allow the facility to resume power until it was deemed safe. In some cases servers were physically migrated to a new facility.
In the aftermath of this disaster the Planet was applauded for their response to the crisis; allocating every resource they could to address the problem and proactively communicating status reports and issuing SLA credits.
Google, whose Enterprise App customers experienced multiple outages on August 6th, 11th and 15th of this year, took a more reactive stance, promising to build a communication dashboard and issuing a blanket credit for all customers, regardless of whether they were impacted by the outage.
The real question remains, what is the cost of data center failure and the resulting downtime for organizations? Is it covered by SLA credits? Most SLA credits reflect the cost of the services rendered and almost never provide for business losses.
At the Continuity Insights Management Conference in 2006, Agility Recovery Solutions stated that 78% of businesses who suffer a catastrophe without a contingency plan are out of business within 2 years. And 90% of companies unable to resume business operations within 5 days of a disaster are out of business within 1 year.
Clearly some applications are considered more critical and have more visibility than others. Large companies feel the impact immediately when their ERP, CRM (SaleForce.com is still plagued by a prime-time outage more than two years ago caused by a failure with an Oracle Database Cluster ?), Business Intelligence or E-mail systems become unavailable.
However, with the proliferation of mobile devices and 'everywhere access', e-mail clearly stands out as the premier mission-critical application of today. Systems like Lotus Notes® and Microsoft® Exchange maintain a living record of a company's existence, storing every activity, process and thought an organization and its employees have. It's no surprise public companies are now required to maintain a record of e-mail activity for compliance purposes.
While the vast majority of businesses rely on e-mail everyday to send contracts, proposals, quotes and the majority of correspondence, most e-mail systems have not yet reached the point of reliability that phone service provides (99.999% or 5.2 minutes of downtime per year)
According to Osterman Research, most North American businesses experience more than one e-mail outage every month -- and many indicate that they could lose more than $100,000 as the result of a single major e-mail outage.¹
Osterman also found that the average business experiences nearly seven hours of e-mail downtime every year and that outages can bring many workers to a virtual standstill, who on average are 25% less productive during e-mail downtime.
"Forget the fact my billing rate gets impacted if I can't access my email system," says a partner at a major North American law firm who prefers to remain anonymous. "My company image gets tarnished immeasurably when I am working on a multi-million dollar, highly-confidential deal and I have to send out a set of documents using my Hotmail account because my email system is down. Somebody gets fired for that."
Michael Osterman, goes on to say, "Organizations are not meeting their targets for messaging system availability," and adds that the average e-mail system experiences about 70 minutes of downtime during a typical month, which translates to 99.84% uptime. To this he poses the question, "Is this good enough?" ¹¹
Ceryx Inc., a Hosted Microsoft Exchange provider with data center facilities in Canada and the United States, doesn?t think so. They were the first in the industry to offer a real 100% SLA based on their multi-data center architecture and software design. Customers? data is replicated in real-time and resides in both data centers – more than 500 miles apart – so that even in the event of catastrophic failure, the primary system would fail over with almost no impact to the end-user.
"We operate on the premise that even the best data center can and will experience failure due to circumstances beyond anyone's control," says Dr. David Penny, CIO at Ceryx. "We focus our R&D on keeping the application highly available and rely on our replication technology to mitigate the vulnerabilities that exist on the data center level. And then we make the operating and capital investments necessary to execute daily."
For the past 4 years Penny and his team have worked with Enterprise Messaging systems, like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, developing technology to deliver high availability. Since 2004 they have been providing a geo-replicated Microsoft® Exchange 2003 service to medium and large-sized companies who see the cost and performance benefits of the Ceryx solution.
Most recently Dr. Penny and his team have been working with Geographic Clustering in Server 2008 and native Microsoft Exchange 2007 CCR (Cluster Continuous Replication) technology. What this allows for is clustering over a wide area network. Traditional clusters, which rely on the same RAID system in order to continue to function properly, are susceptible to logical corruption and certain physical corruptions that can propagate across an entire RAID array causing complete failure. Geo-Clustering eliminates the reliance of redundant servers on the same set of disks thereby eliminating a very common single point of failure.
"Even with WAN replication we need to ensure that the corruption itself isn?t replicated," says Dr. Penny. For this they are utilizing log-shipping with delayed application rather than block-level replication, thereby avoiding the replication of corruptions caused by application defects. By monitoring performance on the primary system closely they can stop bad changes from being committed to the secondary system.
Beyond the physical vulnerabilities of a single data center, Ceryx is protected against a number of other vulnerabilities anyone using a single data center is exposed to. "When negotiating our contract, our provider knows how easy it is for us to move facilities," says Roger Smith. "The data is already replicated and we don?t need to physically migrate servers. Migration to a new facility can occur without any impact to our customers. We can't be held hostage to a bad contract or radical increases in pricing or continued poor performance."
Ceryx also has a lot of flexibility where routing is concerned and should a backbone be down or congested, Ceryx with front-end servers operating at both facilities, has the flexibility to route traffic through a separate facility and bypass potential network congestion that can plague operators running out of a single data center.
While there are a number of solutions in the market that provide continuity through an interim e-mail system in the event of downtime, the Ceryx system is different in that it doesn't require the user to even change settings when the e-mail system fails over to the secondary facility. Moreover, things like e-mail history, sent items and calendar entries all remain intact.
In this respect the Ceryx solution is not a continuity solution but rather a high-availability solution that provides layers of redundancy, from the software level up to the facility level.
Hosted archiving solutions – a good plan for any company facing regulatory and legal compliance - also provides a layer of assurance and access to e-mail records, should the primary facility suffer complete failure. However, these solutions will not provide business continuity or availability.
Moreover, if the primary e-mail provider experiences failure due to data corruption, the data being archived may be corrupt as well. Large data stores, even at the mailbox level, lead to corruption and the current trend of Hosted Exchange vendors selling e-mail accounts with massive storage allowances is introducing a higher probability of data corruption and subsequent failure. A good archiving strategy can be used to keep mailbox sizes manageable and subsequently reduce the likelihood of corruption.
So while extremely valuable in today's world of mission-critical e-mail, archiving to an external hosted facility should not be mistaken for a multi-data center strategy. Instead archiving is a good backup plan and will not provide the protection businesses today need against the inevitable vulnerabilities that exist with a single-data center strategy.
These vulnerabilities are typically covered in the fine print of a facility?s SLAs, under the term "Force Majeure"; a phrase often translated as an "Act of God? or the literal French translation, "Superior Force" and is included as a clause to excuse interruptions in services caused by extraordinary circumstances beyond the control of the provider. Circumstances that - as demonstrated over the past year - are becoming more and more common.
Michael Osterman concludes, in his presentation on the Importance of E-mail Continuity, that the only solution to the inevitable problems that plague mission-critical service delivery is with a geo-replicated, multi-data center solution, like the one being offered by Ceryx.
[simpleaffiliate source="chitika" results="0"][/simpleaffiliate] What are the risks that must be considered by a tourism company that want to involve in e-commerce?
Before making business online, there are risks that must be considered before a tourism company makes the decision. What might be the risks? At least five risks should be considered.
E-commerce needs people with IT background and experience and their pay packets will eat away all the profits and more.
Start Up Guide to Become an Information Security Consultant
For the sake of efficiency, cost effectiveness and to focus on the core business companies world over are switching to outsourcing of IT security. It makes eminent sense too as the information security consultants are the experts of their domain and hiring them is much more economical option than maintaining a whole army of in-house IT security experts.
This cost and efficiency factors combined with the ever growing threat from hackers and exploding online shopping and e-commerce market has made sure that more and more companies are looking for information security consultants to take care of their IT security concerns.
All these factors have made the career of information security consultants quite promising. But before you get ready to jump on the bandwagon, wait and contemplate as to why a company would go for outside IT security experts. This would help you understand the industry better.
Basically there are following three reasons which make a company go for outsourcing.
1. The required services are not available in-house and getting expensive new employees is costly and time consuming option.
2. Company is facing a tight deadline to finish a highly technical project and it is not possible to hire, train new employees and expect the project to be finished in time.
3. Companies need an independent and objective perspective which is not mired in the corporate politics and infrastructure.
When you are clear about these basics you can start the process of being a successful information security consultant which is as following.
Go wholeheartedly – There are no half measures when it comes to making a career. And certainly not when you are entering a field as fluid as IT security. The job outlook and growth is better than average and there are training programs and schools which offer specific curriculum, certificates and degrees in computer security.
Do proper Research> – Since this field is relatively new, the programs are new and not yet established. So go for a recognized and reputable institute which offers all encompassing curriculum in information technology (IT), consisting of but not limited to penetration testing, systems analysis, computer information systems, programming and networking.
Steer clear of frauds – As with any growing field, IT security education field is replete with fly-by-night operators which are there just to make money and offer illegitimate courses which are not recognized and can’t get you a job after graduation.
Don’t be limited to just curriculum– As extensive the curriculum might be, there is always space for more. So don’t just be limited to the courseware and keep on adding to your knowledge of vulnerability analysis, firewall management, virus protection, network and software safety, IT forensics etc.
Add to you certifications – After or during your graduation you can opt for industry recognized certification such as "Cisco" Network Security certification, those offered by Microsoft etc. They will add value to your knowledge and empower your resume.
Gain experience – Once you have graduated you should get industry exposure through school-sponsored IT internships and with entry-level IT jobs. They will help you understand the IT security threats in real time practical environment.
Because of their increasing popularity, a lot of people are wondering if there is a Market America Scam. Occasionally it’s valuable to have an uninvolved, 3rd party review. That’s what you’ll get from me.
THE COMPANY Market America is an internet shopping middle man company that was started by past Amway distributor, RJ Ridinger, in 1992.
Market America doesn't really manufacture any products. Instead they broker products manufactured by other companies, by marketing those products by means of an online website.
Even though the company command center is in Greensboro North Carolina, they operate in a number of countries internationally.
The company passes the “market america scam” test. It’s a legitimate enterprise that’s been in business since 1992. No fraud there.
THE PRODUCTS Product line is composed of almost 3,000 products.
You can view all of the accessible products on the market america webpage.
If you request products from market america, you’ll get them. Does a market america scam survive within the products? No!
THE UNFRANCHISE BUSINESS The true query that I'm sure you are dying to have put to rest is this...Can you make a lot of money with the Market America business program?
Welcome to the "unfranchise" system of Market America. They take this name from the belief that their opportunity is comparable a franchise because it comes with a success plan. At the same time, they declare it avoids the cons of a customary franchise because it's inexpensive and you won't have to be restricted to particular territories.
There has been some insinuation of a market america scam with this because various individuals feel that these definitions are misleading.
1) A franchise costs big start up costs for the reason that it’s a proven system with an extremely great success rate. Market America is in fact an MLM company. MLM in reality, has very high failure ratio.
2) The truth that there are territorial boundaries on franchises is a benefit to the franchise model as it limits competition. With market America, your next door neighbor can start into business with the exact same brand and goods and be your opposition.
THE BOTTOM LINE The conventional marketing strategies of manual list building and cold contacting only work for a number of people.
Multi level works wonderfully and provides absolute financial freedom for those that know and use the following 2 secrets.
1) Leadership 2) Marketing
You see, not only should you develop leadership so that folks will desire to follow you.. you need to advertise that influence to as many consumers as possible.
The best way to do that is through technology.
Let me ask you something. reflect on this for a minute. When Tom Cruise makes a new film, does he compose a list of all his acquaintances, call them and request them to help him get the message out?
That would be ridiculous. The most successful way to communicate is through marketing and mass communication.
"But I don't have the money for TV ads", you express to yourself.
My friends the internet makes it easier than ever to spread the word of your value to incredible numbers of people for FREE.
About the Author
In conclusion, there is no market america scam. They ship products and pay commissions.
You just need to figure out how to fill the compensation plan with people as fast as possible. Watch the market america scam video and follow the link or go to http://www.MLMInternetExplosion.com to find out how.
iMMACC Scam Review - The Internet Marketing Mentoring and Coaching Center Scam Review: Part 2
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